Project information

Saving lives of mums and babies in south India.

Help us build a life-saving Maternity and Child-Care Unit in India.

The Maternal Mortality Rate in India is one of the highest in the world. This new Unit will help reduce it. We will build the Unit above our existing Medical Centre to provide care for some of the poorest people in south India.

Charity information: Hope Gardens

Need

Cumbum is one of the poorest rural areas in Tamil Nadu, with a high Maternal Mortality Rate (India - 200 deaths/1,000 births). The area is served by 1 Government hospital with maternity facilities (but no emergency facilities) plus 4 private hospitals. Due to chronic overcrowding many women are forced to seek private options and nearly all are forced to have C-sections. A private checkup is costs £10, natural birth £120 and a C-section £300. The average daily wage is just £1.50.

Solution

Hope Gardens wants to build a Maternity and Child- Care Unit above our existing Medical Centre. It will have facilities for checkups, an operating theatre, birth ward and a ten-bed unit for post-natal care. We will also be able to offer emergency maternity care - at present the nearest hospital offering these facilities is 40km (1.5 hours ) away. We will also offer natural birth options which are largely unavailable at present due to the time natural birth takes.

Activities

Impact

We believe that clean, accessible facilities will help reduce the Maternal Mortality Rate in South India. There will be fewer complications during and post birth and children will suffer less through more professional medical assistance and support through birth.

Families should have more disposable income, helping people lift themselves out of poverty. Families with more disposable income might be able to afford educating children instead of sending them to work.

Risk

Inflation is rising rapidly in India and the exchange rate is not in our favour. We need to raise the funds quickly to ensure that we are able to lock down our costs. We have recruited additional team members to help put in place a strategy to raise funds to finalise within the next 6-9months.

Reporting

We will provide quarterly newsletters to our supporters, with stories about the success of the maternity ward. Our Trustees and Director travel to India regularly to monitor the success of our projects and will share information and photos.

Current Funding / Pledges

Location

Cumbum, South India

There are 32 villages in Cumbum surrounding the Rhema Garden where our existing Medical Centre is based. It is estimated that 230,000 people live in Cumbum alone. Many of them are poor families working in fields and doing manual labourer work.

Beneficiaries

Pregnant woman and their new born babies will benefit directly from the new maternity services. Families as a whole will also benefit through less debt from private deliveries, better maternal and baby health and less debt so the ability to have more disposable income.

Why Us?

Hope Gardens is a grass roots charity that have been working in partnership with our Indian team for over 15 years. We have local people running local projects and have good links with the local community and surrounding areas. We already provide medical facilities at our well established Medical Centre and have well qualified local doctors who are supporting this project.

Our Chairman and Director make regular trips to India to ensure that all projects are well run.

People

Archbishop Samuel Gnanaprahasam, India

Chairman of the Indian Board, responsible for driving projects in India.

Rev. Richard Lloyd, UK

Chairman of Hope Gardens, responsible for ensuring monitoring and reporting back to supporters.

Dr. Semmalar Selvi, India

Qualified Doctor in India who will be responsible for the maternity centre

Suganthi, a diabetic, was overjoyed when she tested positive for pregnancy at our Medical Centre in the Rhema Garden. Sadly she died just 5 months into her pregnancy due to complications with her diabetes, caused by the pregnancy.

Medical Centre staff

The medical centre in Cumbum is a life saving facility

Archbishop Samuel

The cost of child birth is very high, and it's not easy to travel so far when you are so heavily pregnant. Maternity facilities at the Rhema Garden would be very useful